the evolution of a university student

Why I find blogging difficult, a selfconcious BCMS students admission

“Write a blog” are the three favourite words of every BCMS (Bachelor of Communication & Media Studies) tutor/lecturer. THIS SCARES ME. No, not because I fear the work involved, I actually kinda enjoy it… No, it’s the fear of putting myself out for all the world to see. This fear manifest and forms from three key aspects of myself and what I wish to represent. The first is not wanting to seem ‘attention seeking’ or ‘annoying and spammy’, the second being a classic, a fear of what others will think, a fear of their ‘inevitable’ criticism, this all linking to a fear of not belonging.

I despise sharing random content ‘junk’ on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. I aim to not be that annoying person, you know the one, who are constantly sharing images, videos and random memes. It is part of my ‘don’t be an annoying highly opinionated attention seeking brat’ prevention scheme.

What I expect to happen to me when I dive into the online world

And one could argue that it works, I’ve never had anyone complain about my online habits. However, it’s an issue as I never feel comfortable or at least take serious convincing to share things on social media, even the things that I love, am proud of or feel strongly about. This means my online presence and extension of my online presence suffers. My expression of who I am and what I believe in rarely sees the light of day. Ultimately I will avoid ever writing a blog post that’s not required as my head asks why should I demand their attention for something? Nobody wants to read my random crap!

Who am I really? Do I belong?

I come from a background of Christian faith (note not using the term religion) and in this world, understandably sometimes, that is not accepted, particularly in a University setting. This means that when I am asked to start blogging regularly and create an online persona in order to engage with the field, I feel restricted in what I can express as to not upset, enrage or even unintentionally mislead someone. I am naive, I am always learning, I may flip flop on opinions, I am lazy and really I am not perfect. This I let loose to rule over me and creating my online presence.

The eventual summary of all this is that I fear, just like everyone, not belonging. I am not the average Australian university student (whoever that is), I am shy, anxious and come from a culture with different morals and values to many. But I’m going to try from now on my hardest to not let that censor my online presence, and I hope that if you bothered reading this that you can get something from this too. However, this post is really a selfish one, one for me and to serve as a reminder not to let myself limit who I if I tried harder, could be. A blogger, a sharer of ‘junk’ and a person that some might even be interested in hearing from.
Kind regards & love to all BCMS students and teachers,
Mem xox